Billing for bilateral procedure 20551

Hello,

Medicare-ILLINOIS has denied on a claim for billing the following:
20551 RT
20551 LT
in respective order....

What is the proper way of billing for a Left Elbow and Right Elbow injection?

Can someone please advise?

Thank you.

tendon origin

may differ with payer:
20551
20551-59

There is no Medicare -Illinois

Do you mean Medicaid? if so, there is no rhyme or reason to their system. Good luck getting anything from them!

No Medicare IL

I apologize, I meant Medicare Part B that handles Jurisdiction 5 (states of IL, MI, MN and Wisconsin),,,not sure if they would handle claims differently in comparison to other jurisdiction areas.

Initially, we followed guidelines and billed as 20551 w/ 50 modifier and
realized we were only receiving payment for "one" injection, which we had to go back and appeal on each claim.

So, we tried the following:
20551 - 50 mod - RT
20551 - LT
and found that Medicare started paying accurately...until recently, now they are
being denied.

And...we then tried
20551 RT
20551 LT
and again denied.

So maybe "use of modifier 59" will be more successful since anatomically it is a
different site?????

quantity billing

Were part of the MAC 5 jurisdiction and have the same problem where they will accept a certain way of billing and then stop paying correctly for no rhyme or reason. Is this a code that they will accept qty billing?